[Rick James]

What the hell.

I, personally, can't see this taking off. I like my data right where it is: on my freaking hard drive.

[Mars]

Google has similar plans

[Solatar]

I welcome the ability to easily share things on the web, but if my connection goes down I want to be able to use my computer.

I refuse to store everything on the internet, although I'm sure groups like the RIAA would just love it if everybody's files were on one group of servers.

[terran_emperor]

This sort of thing is stupid...Computers should all come with 4 hard drives.
2 for program and two data

[Flipside]

Was talking about this in University today oddly enough. Digital Data security has proved to be ropey enough already. There's no way on Earth I would willingly choose to store personal or private data/information outside my control.

There's nowhere near enough faith in the ability of the IT sector to keep data secure, and Quantum Encryption is a long way from being a viable option that would allow anything of this sort to actually become viable, for a start, you'd have to replace all the copper networking in the world to optical.

[DREDHAWK]

Why would i wont to store evey thing on the internet sound like it would be easier to hack.  but i could be wrong about that.   and what if my internet goes down well i cant use my computer at all because everything stored on the Internet.  it would be just one big paper weight until i get my internet back.   

[Dark Hunter]

Hang on a moment, are they saying you'll be forced to store your data on the 'net, or is it simply an option? If the latter, I see no reason to get all worked up about this tech.

If the former, though, I agree with the general outrage.

[Rick James]

Hang on a moment, are they saying you'll be forced to store your data on the 'net, or is it simply an option? If the latter, I see no reason to get all worked up about this tech.

The problem is that big business, and in particular consumer electronics, tends to be dictated by what the latest OS is. We won't be outright forced to adopt the new technology, but what happens if there comes a point when, for the sake of business or a desire to have the 'Windows Azure' to use a specific application, we have no choice but to adapt?

[Topgun]

Armageddon comes.

EDIT: no, seriously.

[Excalibur]

No way I'm putting everything in that maze - mabye certain things that you put on file hosting sites but other than that, it is leading to a world where there is one massive leader thingy that monitors everyone, when they do the wrong thing...like in those stories...

[Scooby_Doo]

Dear god... imagine how long it's take to load and save some of my psd files 

[Nuke]

computing in general has become ridiculously dependent on the internet. going as far as having applications you cant leagally use without an internet connection (activation type setups). a computer should be what a computer is supposed to be. i always considered the internet just another addon. but lately if your run a computer the internet is practically a requirement.

this essentially points me to believe that the software companies want total control over everything we do as far as computing goes. they want to restrict us to certain formats that we cannot rely on, they want to know every program we run, and they want our money. thats what this is about. of course all the stupid people will flock to the new system not knowing that theyre being screwed in the ass. its total geekacide man.

[IceFire]

And that sort of super interconnectedness is a little foolhardy I think.  The Internet is important but we should never rely on just one technology.  Its robust, its powerful, but its not totally impervious. Even if the Internet is still up but critical services and routing are down or compromised...then what happens.  There needs to be good fallback options.

[KewlToyZ]

With WiMax on the horizon some possibilities exist but overall the architecture needs to change.
The magnetic RAM architecture would have to go mainstream so the OS architecture would pretty much exist like a BIOS does now. Booting up goes right back where you left off and programs run in their own space without ever writing to the structure of the OS. The energy consumption is cut dramatically and the size of the system is reduced as well.
New hardware standards leading toward open manufacturing portability as well would have to come into play to even give it a chance in h377 of success. Too many manufacturers are reliant on proprietary based tech that they really are insulting their customers and killing themselves off. At the same time the volitility of tech makes it difficult for the standards to even be set before obsolescence occurs. Some stability in those standards are the only hope software development has of actually producing stable environments as well.

[Rick James]

What about sending or receiving files from whatever storage space is in existence? I've got some pretty big files on my computer right now. If they're located on some server and I need to, say, download a DVD image for a project I'm working on, how long will it take to download? The best plan my ISP provides (which I have) offers a max 300 kbps download speed; I can only reliably get half of that. I can't afford to wait nine hours or more.

With a hard drive, I can have the disk image right freaking there and I won't have to dick around with some server for hours on end. This technology assumes that we have internet technology a lot faster than what we have now. We do not. I don't imagine businesses would be willing to invest God knows how many millions of dollars to upgrade their internet connection and probably purchase all-new equipment from an untested OEM.

Azure needs to be killed and it needs to be killed now.

[Scooby_Doo]

What about sending or receiving files from whatever storage space is in existence? I've got some pretty big files on my computer right now. If they're located on some server and I need to, say, download a DVD image for a project I'm working on, how long will it take to download? The best plan my ISP provides (which I have) offers a max 300 kbps download speed; I can only reliably get half of that. I can't afford to wait nine hours or more.

With a hard drive, I can have the disk image right freaking there and I won't have to dick around with some server for hours on end. This technology assumes that we have internet technology a lot faster than what we have now. We do not. I don't imagine businesses would be willing to invest God knows how many millions of dollars to upgrade their internet connection and probably purchase all-new equipment from an untested OEM.

Azure needs to be killed and it needs to be killed now.

Precisely.

[Herra Tohtori]

The concept of "local copy" is not going to disappear anywhere. For files that are needed to be at hand reliably, local copy on hard disk drive or data crystal or whatever media is used is never going to be overtaken by remote storage. Same with local processing vs. remote processing... But, I can imagine remote storage and processing being useful in some cases - in fact, some things already use a setup like this.

Consider Opera Mini, a relatively popular phone browser software. What it actually does is that it connects to Opera's server, sends the url, which is then processed by Opera's server hardware into a form that is sent to phone, which then shows the data. It's advantages are that the phone doesn't need to do as much page processing, so the loading times are reduced (in theory anyway). Disadvantages are that it adds a third party to the connection so if you want secure connection, it might not be appealing to you.

Also, remote processing might provide an advantage for cases where the local processing capacity is limited...


But wait, is any of this actually new technology? SSH connection has existed for a long time already. The only thing that limits the usability of remote console and desktop solutions is transfer speed. Using X11 tunneling with SSH, I can already do this stuff on my university account; I can store data there and use any software installed on the university computers that I have access to. The reason why I don't do it is that with current internet connection, the GUI gets tacky. Data storage has come off useful on occasion - having a public_html folder is pretty handy for some limited file/image hosting.

But, as said, for confidential, private data and cases where reliability is needed, local copy will always be preferred solution. Remote processing... I can't think of applications where more processing power would be needed for normal users. Current PC's are not going to get any slower either, and professional/scientific simulation runs will be done on dedicated environments anyway.

So I kinda fail to see the point. All they are offering is a way for users to store casual, meaningless crap on their servers, which I can't understand to be honest.


Then again, if it proves reliable and secure (I have my doubts seeing how it's Microsoft, and Google is starting to give me shivers anyway...), it could be utilized as an SVN storage space for projects such as FSUpgrade or any mods/tc's with large enough staff for it to be meaningful.

[blackhole]

The idea of "subscription applications" is just another way for companies to make more money.

[Fury]

+1 to Herra Tohtori for posting the first freakin' sensible post in this topic. The rest of you need to stop being so hysterical. I for one welcome use of internet based services as an option to local.

[Flipside]

+1 to Herra Tohtori for posting the first freakin' sensible post in this topic. The rest of you need to stop being so hysterical. I for one welcome use of internet based services as an option to local.

As I said earlier, there's no way I would choose to store personal data on an Internet source until there is something like Quantum Encryption to keep it safe. So before you start accusing people of being hysterical, stop jumping to conclusions yourself.